Hiroshima bomb site more popular than ever among foreign tourists

CNN staff • Updated 27th May 2016

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(CNN) — More than seven decades after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, effectively ending World War II, President Barack Obama is set to become the first U.S. president in history to visit the site of the attack on Friday.

The president's visit shines an even brighter spotlight on what's already one of the most popular tourist attractions in Japan.

According to the figures it's the fourth straight year of growth, an increase of 104,531 international visitors over 2014.

A report by Hiroshima Peace Media attributes the increased popularity among foreigners to a number of factors.

"The [Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation] believes that the museum's high ranking on a travel website added momentum to the increase, in addition to the rising number of international visitors to Japan," says the report.

"Another big factor was the World Scout Jamboree, a worldwide event for Boy Scouts, held in Yamaguchi Prefecture last summer. About 27,000 participants of the event visited the museum."

Though not specified, that "travel website" is likely TripAdvisor.

It currently lists the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum as the country's number two attraction, behind Miyajima Island, also located in Hiroshima prefecture.

According to the museum's website, it will be closed the afternoon of May 27 due to the U.S. president's visit.

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Inside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum opened 10 years after the attack, which killed an estimated 140,000 people.

Some describe Hiroshima as a gripping, educational and emotional example of "dark tourism," "grief tourism" or "battlefield tourism," which includes Nazi concentration camps in Europe, Cambodia's torture prison and killing fields, and West African slave ports, as well as the Nagasaki Peace Park and Atomic Bomb Museum.

Policemen control traffic outside Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park the day before U.S. President Barack Obama's scheduled visit.

Jean Chung/Getty Images AsiaPac/Getty Images

The latter site memorializes the events and devastation surrounding the second atomic bomb dropped on that Japanese city three days after the Hiroshima bombing.